ATMs need periodic replenishment so that they can continue to dispense cash to customers. Owners of large ATM networks typically use cash optimization techniques to ensure that the cash distributed throughout a bank's network (which includes the bank's ATMs) is optimally located to maintain availability of cash and to minimize cash replenishment operations, without requiring large amounts of surplus cash (which is expensive) to be located within the network.
When a cash-in-transit (CIT) company replenishes banknotes at an ATM, the CIT personnel manually enters (by typing in) the amount of cash being replenished via a management application executing on the ATM. This is referred to as the Initial Cash Amount Totals.
Sometimes, however, CIT personnel do not type in the correct amount of banknotes that were provided in the replenishment operation. This means that the ATM has the wrong tally of banknotes present.
This has two negative consequences.
Firstly, a transaction host is used to record transactions executed at the ATM and to maintain counts of the banknotes remaining in the ATM. If the wrong initial amount is provided then the transaction host will be out of synchronization with the ATM.
Secondly, this can result in the ATM running out of cash before the next scheduled replenishment (if the CIT personnel typed in more than the actual amount of banknotes that were provided) or having excess cash that is removed from the ATM (if the CIT personnel typed in less than the actual amount of banknotes that were provided). This also slows down auditing and cash balancing/reconciliation of the ATM because an incorrect cash reference is used.